Well - "Konami has renewed interest in RPGs with Frontier Gate coming to PSP this year and Beyond the Labyrinth in development for the 3DS." actually seems like a positive. Maybe once they dip their toe in the water with these, they'll realise they've only been putting out MGS and Winning Eleven games this gen and do a Suikoden game.

I mostly pop in occasionally to give my two cents on certain controversial things, so if you disagree then send a PM, because I generally don't check for replies in threads in case I feel like replying and then things get heated/derailed.

It did, yeah, but my main gripe (wth Radiata Stories's battling) is how it sometimes makes Jack move without the player pressing any direction to do so, and that can fuck up the player when the player is trying to block since you have to hold X and not move at all in order to block.

Sadly, Radiata's Stories' battle system ended up without much depth and seemed focused on mechanics that, while potentially interesting, were generally avoided by players because they either did not work as they were intended or had no actual use.

When I think of why radiata stories sucked the battle system isn't what comes to mind. It's how everything fell apart when I had to pick sides and went non human. My motivation for the choice was I thought it'd be more interesting and that humans were dicks. It wasn't and the monsters were also dicks.

Jacks motivation was he turned cloak for a chick who he didn't even know was possessed. He was a idiot, and not even the usual 'endearing idiot who overcomes the odds with determination and the strength of his heart!' Just a idiot. And everyone treated him like one too.

It was like the game was telling me 'You fucked up and done chose the wrong side, son'. I read spoilers for the human end though, and while I don't remember the details, it seemed just as bad. Still, I probably would have liked that side a bit more just for more variety in the party members instead of 'Goblin #7 joined!'.

Sadly, Radiata's Stories' battle system ended up without much depth and seemed focused on mechanics that, while potentially interesting, were generally avoided by players because they either did not work as they were intended or had no actual use.

amirite?

Not like he'll respond. Or come up with a decent argument for Radiata Stories beyond "I liked it and you're stupid/need to die for not liking it!" Alternatively, you're stupid for liking something he doesn't, whichever.

Well, it seems the ''Suikoden Team Disbanded'' news was a half truth, at best.

Since then we have a new Suikoden. And while the development team behind this may have consitsted of some new faces, it seems far more likely that many familiar faces where taken from their various other fields within Konami to help with this games development, also.

Bearing this in mind, we have to remember that there was never really a Suikoden team to begin with. Apart from the very first Suikoden. The original team was then expanded to make SII. And then expanded again to make SIII. Some of those staff members left during SIII and the guys who had been working on the Suikogaidens then joined the main development team.

So, you see, there never really was a concrete ''Suikoden Team''. I would call the team responsible for the first three games ''the Suikoden team''. But even they seemed to change so much in a short space of time.

Suikoden IV seems like an almost entirely new team based on how different the game itself is (also bearing in mind Murayama and co did not work on this game). And then the Suikoden V team was, again, even different from the SIV team.

I think people made a mountain of a molehill here. The comments made during that interview were not intended to be taken that way.

A big factor is how Suikoden III played out, I think. Had it been like, say, Suikoden V instead I doubt it'd have been a big deal if the original director and story mastermind left, but since SuikIII was building up to bigger, series-wide stuff it became a pretty big deal. It'd be like if ME1 and 2 were just random space adventures staring Commander Shepard, ME3 played out almost exactly like ME1 did... then the series went completely off track, then switched to an entirely different universes for ME"6" and beyond.